Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Help Save Pretty Bird Woman House...

According to a recent Amnesty International report, more than one in three American Indian and Alaskan Native women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Domestic violence is also a serious problem. Often victims have nowhere to turn due to poverty, remote geography and tangled legal jurisdictions.

Local women’s shelters can make a dramatic difference in helping women cope with the effects of violence, and helping them escape from situations where further violence is likely.

Too often, these shelters are chronically under funded.

Zintkala Waste Win Oti (“Pretty Bird Woman House”) has run out of funding and will be forced to close in May if new resources can’t be found to fund it. It serves the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which is on the border of North and South Dakota. The shelter was founded by Jackie Brown Otter after the kidnapping, rape and murder of her sister (whose Lakota name means Pretty Bird Woman).

As a shelter volunteer in my home town of St. Louis Missouri, I know how important local shelters are and I know how hard it is to keep the doors open.